I came to this episode having not seen "The Jem'Hadar", but it was the start of Series 3, so it did not take too long to catch up. The Defiant came in straight away, and I think she was the best thing to happen to the show. Admittedly, she's not perfect, but she gets the main characters away from the station and out into open space. She strikes me as essentially a big gunboat rather than a ship, and the 'submarine' element of the cloaking device is a nice addition. It's unfortunate that her first outing went so badly for her. We also meet both Eddington and Subcommander T'Rul as well. T'Rul might have made an interesting character, but she disappeared after this. Perhaps they should not have given her the brow-ridge look, because it froze her face into an expressionless glare, which would have made some aspects of character development tricky. Still, she had the sense to suggest that Sisko carried on with the mission rather than risk his ship to rescue two people. I picked up on Odo's homing instinct almost straight away, and the shape-shifters rising out of what appeared to be a lake was no surprise. Still, worth watching.

This is one of the easiest 5-star reviews I've ever given. I found this to be tense and exhilerating with a terrific, desperate battle against the Jem'Hadar. The fact that the Starship Defiant is heavily defeated was a shock, perhaps not the best way to introduce a new Borg-fighting warship, but in fairness one ship cannot take on the entire Dominion, especially near their leaders' home planet (even though Voyager can take on the Borg Collective). I just loved the combination of character development, space battles, tense submarine-style cloaking sequences, and the Defiant quite simply kicks arse in one-on-one action sequences despite its lack of plot-related invulnerability (sometimes). Nice to finally see a ship that isn't just an Enterprise clone; the Defiant offers Trek something very different and sums up DS9's aggressive, sometimes militaristic attitude, plus of course the cloaking device brings some intrigue and brings new possibilities. While the Defiant seems way too small to fight the Borg, it's still one of my favourite Trek vessels and it cannot be called boring!

I LOVED the Defiant. She may not have been the Enterprise, but she sure strutted her stuff and showed those Jem'Hadar that they can NOT just F**K with the Federation, even though they are a peace loving organization. What I didn't exactly fall in love with as easily was the fact that Defiant was QUICKLY surrounded. Still, as =NoPoet= said, in all fairness, you don't exactly expect ONE Federation starship (EVEN A STATE OF THE ART PROTOTYPE LIKE DEFIANT) to take one THREE Jem'Hadar ships and expect to come out the victor necessarily. It definitely made for a good episode though and I couldn't wait to see exactly what part 2 had brought up next. 4 out of 5.